Word: leader
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...plans, new programs, most of all what columnists have long called "new approaches," hung high like pie in the sky. Any bright young Senator could make headlines by calling a press conference to tell how the U.S. could become the Man in the Moon. Even hard-bitten Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had become a space specialist, gone clean out of this world...
...balance of powers among the five House rulers is explained by the fact that their jobs were once held by two men. For many years the Speaker was also chairman of the Rules Committee, and the chairman of Ways & Means (which handled appropriations along with tax bills). The majority leader was the other major figure -and he was generally the creature of the Speaker. This meant in effect that one man held all the reins of power...
MASSACHUSETTS' JOHN MCCORMACK, 67, was elected Democratic floor leader the same month -September, 1940 -that Mister Sam became Speaker (during the two Republican Congresses since then, Rayburn became floor leader, McCormack Democratic whip). Boston-born John McCormack, a cigar-munching teetotaler, was left fatherless at 13, shined shoes, ran errands, earned his way through night law school, was elected to the House in 1928. He is a hard-knuckled politician from one of the hardest knuckled of all political schools: Massachusetts' Twelfth Congressional District. More than half Irish, the Twelfth takes in ten dingy, crowded...
...housing than any other U.S. congressional district. Childless, devoted to his wife Harriet (he can boast that in 39 years of marriage they have never missed dinner together, whether at public banquet or in fireside privacy), McCormack too is, in effect, wedded to the House. Heir apparent to Rayburn, leader of the New England Democratic bloc, grey, sharp-featured John McCormack is, in his own words, his party's "field general." His battlefield is the House floor, his weapon one of the House's toughest and most partisan tongues. "I'm a great believer in the two-party system...
...time limits on debate, by deciding whether amendments may be made from the floor. Such a power position is made to order for lanky (6 ft. 160 lbs.), courtly Howard Smith, possessor of the bushiest eyebrows south of John L. Lewis. A Byrd organization Democrat, he is the recognized leader of House Southern conservatives, uses his committee to fight off civil rights legislation. ("I use every weapon I've got," he says. "That's why I'm here.") Since 1931 Judge Smith (he was a state circuit judge) has represented Virginia's Eighth Congressional District, stretching from the Blue Ridge...